A wordpress poll plugin is an interesting way of getting to know the opinion of website visitors. If you have some idea in your mind but want to know that whether people would like it or not, then a poll can be a huge help in making that decision.
WordPress is a robust and user-oriented content management system. It offers website owners a rich set of third-party plugins to interact with their blog readers.
If you are running a blog on WordPress, then having polls can work wonders for your blog. More than that, it’s a great way to make your website more personalized by adding some hot topics or issues that visitors can engage in.
Running a poll on your blog can be easily achieved with the help a WordPress poll plugin. Today, there are hundreds of plugins for WordPress that can be used to run polls on your website.
But because of the numerous options, choosing the best plugin to use may seem daunting. To solve this problem we have tried and tested many poll plugins and shortlisted the best among the free WordPress poll plugins.
But before that, let’s dig in a little deeper why you need polls in your site.
Why Do You Need Polls
Polls can be used by any website who like to interact with their users and get to know them better. A very simple poll question i saw in one website is “Are you a designer?” with “yes or no” to answer.
Feedback is the best response a topic can receive even it is from a critic. It improves total user interactivity and how users use your website.
People get bored easily when they dig on a certain topic they are looking for. A simple poll can change the mood of the user, trust me it is very interesting to play around with polls.
WordPress users can choose from a variety of poll plugins which can be integrated as widgets in most cases. In this topic we will show you how to get started with poll plugins. Social polling plugin lets you integrate polls to your Facebook page as well as in website.
Oh, and did anyone tell you that polls can greatly increase your traffic? If no one has yet, then, YES, polls are a great way to boost your traffic.
WordPress poll plugins also help blog owners collect valuable feedback on their WP posts. This way, the users are allowed to voice their opinions about important issues that are raised in the site.
WP poll plugins also enhance visitor engagement. This is useful in determining if the content in your site needs to be improved.
So yes, polls are very beneficial.
If you are already been using polls on your website then you will find out more plugins to choose from here.
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty and take a look at the 5 best WordPress Polls plugins, and how to incorporate them to your website.
The WordPress Polls Plugin You Should Use
#1 – WP-Polls
Wp Polls is a free WordPress poll plugin with a simple layout, this plugin uses Ajax poll system on your WordPress website.
This plugin allows you to embed a poll within your posts or your pages. It is also highly customizable, so you can change the look of the polls by changing the CSS structure or by using a template.
Your polls can have multiple answers, which is great if you want more than one best answer to your survey or question.
The plugin features an Ajax poll system, customizable CSS, multiple answers, and use of a template.
WP-Polls has been largely simplifying the process of putting surveys online. This plugin enables each user to add a poll to their WordPress’s blog pages or posts through CSS styles and templates.
It is free to download with tons of available editing options that all you need to succeed online.
In terms of industry reputation, WP-Polls is one of the most popular. It is highly rated by the general public with over one million downloads.
In the meantime, according to users’ online votes, this plugin has got a satisfying rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars.
When it comes to the system requirement, it requires 3.9 or higher version of WordPress and is compatible up to the 4.1 edition.
Setting Up WP-Polls on WordPress
There are two ways to set up this WP-Polls plugin.
First, you can choose to install this plugin through “sider.php” file manually. The second option is to use automatic installation through the dashboard of WordPress.
This is done by going to your dashboard, then click <“Plugins > then click Add New. Find WP-Polls and download. Then “Install” then click “Activate”.
It is recommended to choose the latter approach especially for those who don’t know PHP codes well.
Once completed, you can go directly to the “Installed Plugins” area. You can check and edit this plugin as is showed in the following screenshot.
How to display Poll in your WordPress website:
Go to “Widgets” section which you will find under “Appearance” option in your WordPress dashboard. You can drag “Polls” widget to the sidebar in order to activate it. As you drag this widget to activate it, it will ask you which polls you want to display out of all polls that you have created.
If you want to display your poll somewhere else like in website’s footer or header then you can use this PHP code:
Where “xx” is your poll id of the poll that you have created. If you do not know PHP well, then I would suggest you to not mess with your themes code.
#2 – PollDaddy Polls
PollDaddy Polls Ratings plugin can help you create, manage and rate polls from within the WP dashboard.
There are 20 different types of polls to choose from and you can select a closing date for when you want the poll to end.
The multiple answers feature is a great feature, and there is an option to display the results publicly or to make it private.
You can also embed the poll on other websites, and you can customize them to show different styles. You can create unlimited polls as well as have unlimited results.
Having polls in your posts or your sidebars might attract your visitors’ interest in one way or another. The question is what poll systems you can use and how you should use them.
There are some WordPress plugins out there that do their jobs just fine. But if you want a more comprehensive solution, Polldaddy will be your perfect poll system.
Adding Polldaddy.com’s polls to your blog is also easy.
All the default configurations and the codes you use to show the polls on your blog can be customized to make everything better.
Using Polldaddy WordPress Plugin
PollDaddy Polls & Ratings will work just like another Polldaddy’s administration page. You will find it very similar if you have ever logged in to http://polldaddy.com.
But for WordPress blog owners, you must already know that your blog comes with PollDaddy. You can create polls directly in your WP dashboard. Here’s the WordPress support article on how to add polls to your site the simplest way.
This saves you having to login to PollDaddy.com each time you need to create a poll or check on your results.
If you have a WordPress.com blog, look at the menu on the left hand and find the “Polls” option. You can then hook up your current PollDaddy account to your WP blog. Now, your polls and their results will be visible and available in the dashboard.
If you have a self hosted WordPress blog then you can download and install the PollDaddy WordPress plugin to get the same great features.
Why Use PollDaddy?
This plugin allows you to create new polls or edit existing polls that you have created on polldaddy.com.
You can also define custom styles or customize a pre-defined styles. You can do this using a very advanced and intuitive interface with almost no page reloading needed.
With the latest version of this plugin, however, there isn’t an option to apply CSS rules directly to your custom styles.
Another cool feature this plugin offers is the ability to separate your blog’s polls and your account’s poll. This is very useful for blogs that have several users that can access the back-end system.
If you have, for example, an author on your blog then he will be able to create his own blog polls. You can then be the administrator while having his account (or private) polls administrated by no one but him.
#3 – YOP Polls
YOP Poll is a free WordPress Poll plugin that seems to have everything rolled into one package. You can access the poll options from the WordPress dashboard. This plugin will help you to take care of all the minor details that should be accounted.
With this plugin you can have single or multiple answers. You have the benefit of having multiple options to make the setting according to your choice to fill the information in you poll.
Polls are just one of those things that your site might just need, but can be almost counter-intuitively difficult to set up. YOP Poll prides itself on addressing the needs of the user to make setting up polls a fairly painless experience.
What Does It Do?
YOP Poll adds a new custom post type for Polls. From there you can set up new user polls and customize each one to fit the needs of your site. Polls are displayed through the use of a shortcode, and using a template which can be edited. However, there are several themes to choose from out of the box.
YOP Poll also allows you to manage all of your polls in one place, with a quick view of the results all in one place.
How Does it Work
Probably the easiest way to get started with the plugin is to create you first poll. You will find that there are lots of options for customizations. These are meant to make your life easier, not harder, and most are simply enhancements.
To create your first poll, go to Yop Poll -> Add New, and you’ll be brought to the poll editing screen.
The first thing to do is enter in the title of your poll. By default, this title will be displayed alongside the poll, but you can always remove this from the template.
The next step is probably the most important, but the easiest to set-up. Enter in the actual question of your poll, then fill in the possible Answers.
Click the “Add New Answer” to keep adding new answers to your poll. There is no limit though I’m sure users would appreciate it if it were just a few.
You can also click the “Remove” button to delete an answer. Below this, you will see a “Answers Advanced Options” button, which opens up a new panel of settings.
These are settings that have to do with how answers are displayed. For instance how they should be sorted, whether or not answers should be displayed horizontally or vertically, and whether or not to allow multiple answers.
Leaving these options at their default will give you a standard poll layout. Keep in mind that there are plenty of options for customization.
The next section is “Custom Text Fields.” This is optional, but if you want to add a text field at the bottom of your poll for users to fill out (e.g. Name, Email), you can click the “Add new custom field” button and enter in the label for that text field.
Under this, check the “Required” box if you want the user to have to fill in the text field before submitting their vote.
The View Results Options section gives all of the options related to just the Results.
This includes choosing who can view the results (guests, registered users or both). It will also show what text should be displayed when results are shown.
You can also show / hide any links related to the results, and change the text of any of the labels shown underneath your poll. At the bottom of this section you will see a radio button for “Auto Generate Poll Page.”
If you chose the “Yes” option then a new page on your WordPress install will be added with just your poll. The URL of this page will be displayed in the “Poll Page URL” after you have saved it.
I would only use this option if you want each poll to have its own unique page, otherwise it’s best to insert the polls using a shortcode.
The Other Options section contains all of the customizations that don’t fit anywhere else.
You can also do the following:
- Enable a CAPTCHA
- Choose which users are allowed to vote
- Block specific users from voting, and make sure that users can only vote once per poll.
This is also the section where you can choose which template your poll should use.
You will see from the drop-down menu that there are a variety of pre-built options in several different colors.
Chances are you’ll be able to find something that fits your needs, but you can also create your own template or modify an existing one.
To do this, go to Yop Poll -> Templates. Here you will see a list of templates which you can edit, or you can click “Add New.” It’s probably best to find a template that is close to the style you want and simply tweak it.
What Else You Should Know About YOP Poll
YOP Poll is completely free and under very active development with new features being added at users requests. If you are having problems with it, start with the FAQ, and then move support forums where the plugin developer is very active.
As with most front-end plugins, CSS and Javascript will be added when polls are displayed. This is for both styling and functionality.
#4 – Opinion Stage Poll
Polls by Opinionstage is a plugin which takes care of polls in an elaborated form. There are so much options available in this plugin that you can make a poll with lot of different ways.
This plugin integrates with your social media option quite nicely. This helps users make a selection with their social media account.
The plugin comes with major features like multiple answers and access with the dashboard. You can also view the social profiles of the poll participants.
You can also filter the result by different types such as location, gender, time-frame,etc.
Opinion Stage makes polls easy to setup, embed on a site and share on popular social networks. If you have a need for it, you can even track the demographics of your voters to get more insight into the opinions you have collected.
How to Create Polls with Opinion Stage
You must first create an account on Opinion Stage with a Facebook, Twitter or Google+ account. An account gives you a dashboard that allows you to easily see all the polls you have created.
To create your first poll, click on Create Poll. You’ll be able to see a few options for your custom poll.
For Template, you choose between multiple-choice or head-to-head (only 2 answers). For Type of poll, you get three choices.
The first one requires voting with a social profile (this gives you the demographics of your voters). The second makes registration optional, and the third allows anonymous voting.
You can then add your poll question and support it with a text description, image or video. This adds a little more life to your polls and a visual explanation (particularly with video).
Other options allow you to change the look of your poll. This is done by choosing a few preset themes and setting the poll box size or having it at a fixed width for a perfect fit on your website.
You can also enable or disable social sharing of your poll on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Then you can set visibility for your poll results. The options are: displayed all the time, displayed after a received vote or totally hidden from users.
Adding Polls To Your Website
Once you have done creating your poll, you can share the provided link to gain voters.
If you want it displayed on your WordPress site, install and use the Opinion Stage Social Poll plugin to embed this on the site. This is done via the unique poll ID.
Opinion Stage lets you create beautiful polls for your website. We like the fact that the polls can be supported with images and a YouTube video to make it more interesting.
The free option is also more than enough if you’re looking to collect data for a simple question without the need of any detailed social demographics.
#5 – Colored Vote Polls
Colored vote poll is a free WordPress poll plugin which gives you a liberty to use different colors for different set of answers.
Answering a poll can be made mandatory according to you wish, then a poll can be placed anywhere in post or page with the help of a short-code. This plugin is one of the easiest to set up, use of this plugin is simple too.
You can have as many questions as well as answers in your polls as you want. The feature of controlling poll participation by IP, cookie, user can really be helpful to stop poll spamming.
Are you looking for a WordPress plugin to let others vote for ideas, questionnaire, survey etc. and even can add their own questions?
Here is your solution written in PHP, MySQL and AJAX to create a beautiful and powerful voting system on WordPress CMS.
With Colored Vote Polls, you can create multiple questionnaires with available choices in answer. You can check the stat of voting procedure as and even can make the stat public.
Features of Colored Vote Polls Plugin
- You can create several questionnaires with as many questions as you want
- Each question will have X (indefinite) number of answers (fixed answers)
- Option to make question mandatory or optional
- Assign a color to each answer to make the final result more readable
- Admin can control whether user can view results without voting or NOT
- Visitor can add their own question if Admin allows to do so
How to Install Colored Vote Polls Plugin
- Download the Plugin .zip file
- Unzip and upload the plugin folder to ‘wp-content/plugins’ folder on your WordPress hosting server
- Activate the plugin from WordPress dashboard
How to Use
Once you activate the plugin, you will get a menu on Dashboard as ‘Colored Votes’ with sub-menus as Polls, Add New and Settings.
On Polls sub-menu page, you get a list of all polls created with this plugin. You can also find the number of votes on each poll, status of the poll and shortcode to implement (embed) that poll on posts or pages.
On ‘Add New’ sub-menu page, you can create a new poll with questions of your choice. You can choose to have mandatory questions or optional ones.
Provide fixed answers for those questions under the poll. You can also set the expiry date of the poll or can change the status of the poll as well.
Admin can also choose to show the results to visitors without them having to vote. You can even set an option to let the visitor add questions to the poll from front-end.
On the Settings sub-menu page, you can choose whether everyone can vote or only registered users can do so.
You can also select how the plugin will track users who voted for the poll. Whether it will track IP address, cookies, user login of the voters can be set on the settings page. You can also select the default colors for answers of the questions.
Other WordPress Polls Plugins You Can Use
MicroPoll
This is a WordPress poll plugin that works with the MicroPoll service to deliver dead simple polls to your blog visitors. This is achieved even without having to use the default Javascript code from MicroPoll.
After you’ve installed the MicroPoll plugin, all you need to to do is grab your poll embed code from the MicroPoll website. Then you can paste it into the MicroPoll widget. The result is a simple yet elegant looking polling widget that works like a charm.
Online polls are fun, aren’t they? A lot of people enjoy taking polls as a way of voicing their opinions on specific subjects.
Learning to make an online poll is fun, too. They can also be very helpful. For instance, you may want to know what a certain group of people (such as your blog readers) thinks about a specific subject. A poll can also help you decide what you want to do in many areas.
MakeUseOf has posted many tech-related polls and our readers have participated in them in a wonderful way. Check out some of them either by clicking here or by clicking the “Polls” link in the sidebar under the topics menu.
You too can make your own online poll in the sidebar of your blog or website and MicroPoll makes the process quick and easy.
All it consists of is setting it up, tweaking the design and grabbing the embed code for your site.
Setting Up A Poll With MicroPoll
First things first: you must sign up for an account.
Once you sign up, you can log in and start the process of setting up a poll. Begin by clicking the “Create New MicroPoll” button.
Next enter the question you want answered and the possible answers. You’ll want to hit Enter after each answer.
Notice the preview of the poll showing up next to the fields you are filling out. Once done, hit the “Create New Poll” button. You will then be brought to a list of your published polls. Find the one you are working on, click “Options” and then “edit” from the dropdown menu.
Right off the bat you’ll notice the embedding code which you need in order to embed the poll on your site.
Further down the page you will find the Settings section where you can edit the details of the post.
At this point, if you like the look of the poll (the preview is still off to the right), you are all set to embed it on your site. Just grab the code and go at it. However, if you want to change how it looks, you can.
Tweaking The Design Of Your MicroPoll
Right below the details of the post, you’ll notice the “Theme” drop down menu. You can choose one of the MicroPoll themes or tweak the default theme.
There are also some more customizations you can do under the “Customize Poll” menu that aren’t so design related. You can also customize the results page.
MicroPoll seems to have a lot of modification options for a service that is still really easy to use. Mess around a bit and tweak your poll until you have it how you want it.
Grabbing The Code For Your Site
After making sure you hit the “save changes” button, go back to the top of the page and grab the embed code.
Remember that the embed code will only work where HTML is accepted. I used a text widget in my WordPress blog’s sidebar and it works fine.
Notice that you can also grab the link to share if you’d rather not mess with embedding.
There are many polling sites and plugins out there to choose from (MakeUseOf is currently using Polldaddy). The simplicity along with the custom ability of MicroPoll gives them a leg in the game at least.
Social Polls
If you’re looking to create two-sided polls, Social Polls is the perfect solution. You can use it to find out which products, services, brands, etc are favored by your users. i.e. Apple vs Microsoft, Android vs iOS, Facebook vs Twitter.
Inserting a poll into your blog posts is done by clicking a button in your blog editor and customizing it as you like.
Social Polls is great because it allows users to vote using their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Users can also voice anonymously if they prefer.
Social Polls creates a mini social networking within your blog. This allows users to follow other poll participants. All poll participants will get a profile displaying their activity and opinions. This comes along with their influence, followers and other useful information.
Final Thoughts
If you want your blogging to become more successful, you have to gather data from your visitors. You have to learn more about their needs, and their opinion.
This is why a WordPress blog or website should have polls. If you want to connect with your readers, polls are a great way to do it. It is also a quick and fun way to interact with your visitors, to know what they are thinking.
Through polls, you can get invaluable statistics regarding your site. The question is: how can you use the data? Here are the benefits of using WordPress polls:
You Can Get General Feedback
Polls can and are being used to gather feedback from your visitors and returning community members. It’s as simple as asking ‘what is your favorite color’.
From the answers, you are already gathering data about the customer that could help us sell something to him.
Try to use any of these questions if you’re having a hard time coming up with your own:
Are You a Business Owner?
Are You Single or Married?
What Are Your Passions?
You’re guaranteed to gather tons of valuable data, this data will then help you make important decisions.
It doesn’t matter how many people are visiting your site. The sooner you start gathering this data – the quicker you are going to learn about your audience.
You Can Learn Your Audience
There is nothing like creating polls to learn about your audience. You’re directly asking questions to the majority of your visitors. And with the answers, you’re receiving real data. The information you get is invaluable, as you can use to create products and books based on the interest of your community.
So if you want to become a blogging authority, creating polls is getting you one step closer to that dream. Make polls part of your plans and blogging goals.
You Can Get Statistics for Infographics / Pie Charts
The last benefit of using WordPress polls to gather data about your community is the data that you’re going to be able to hold on to.
You can use the data to make a poll report after a period of time. After which you can show your readers what the other people answered. Or you can continue gathering data until you have information to create a pie chart or infographic.
It is quite obvious that there are excellent benefits to having infographics on your website. It gives your visitors data instantly without having to read much. It is highly time efficient and it presents the chance to build both organic and natural backlinks.
Polls are great for improving user engagement as well as getting feedback. Polls make great additions to blog posts concerning a product or service because you can find out what your readers think of it. While some may think that adding a poll to blog posts is difficult, it’s really not.
If you’re using a plugin adding a poll is easy takes only a few minutes. Years ago your best option may have been to use an outside source to create a poll and then insert the code into your blog post.
Things are now much easier and often just require the click of a button from your blog editor. Top this off with a minute or two of customization and then clicking another button to insert a poll, then you are done.
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